clear. Not a cloud, and already the full moon was well up in the starry sky. The Breton was shivering. He had lost his jacket and he was down to his shirt. I lent him the oilskin.
We began the seventh day. ‘Mates, we can’t be very far from Curaçao. I have a hunch I made a little too much northing, so now I’ll steer due west, because we mustn’t miss the Dutch West Indies. That would be serious, now we’ve no fresh water left and all the food’s gone except for the reserve.’
‘We leave it to you, Papillon,’ said the Breton.
‘Yes, we leave it to you,’ said all the others together. ‘You do what you think right.’
‘Thanks.’
It seemed to me that what I had said was best. All night long the wind had failed us and it was only about four in the morning that a breeze set us moving again. This breeze strengthened during the forenoon, and for thirty-six hours it blew strong enough to carry us along at a fair rate, but the waves were so gentle we never thumped at all.
Curaçao
Gulls. First their cries, because it was still dark, and then the birds themselves, wheeling above the boat. One settled on the mast, lifted off, then settled again. All this flying around lasted three hours and more until the dawn came up, with a brilliant sun. Nothing on the horizon showed any hint of land. Where the hell did all these gulls and sea-birds come from? Our eyes searched throughout the day, and searched in vain. Not the least sign of land anywhere near. The full moon rose just as the sun was setting; and this tropical moon was so strong that its glare hurt my eyes. I no longer had my dark glasses – they had gone with that diabolical old wave, as well as all our caps. At about eight o’clock, very far away in this lunar daylight, we saw a dark line on the horizon.
‘That’s land all right,’ said I, the first of us all to say it.
‘Yes, so it is.’
In short, everybody agreed that they could see a dark line that must be land of some sort. All through the rest of the night I kept my bows pointed towards this shadow, which grew clearer and clearer. We were getting there. No clouds, a strong wind and tall but regular waves, and we were running in as fast as we could go. The dark mass did not rise high over the water, and there was no way of telling whether the coast was cliffs, rocks or beach. The moon was setting on the far side of the land, and it cast a shadow that prevented me from seeing anything except a line of lights at sea-level, continuous at first and then broken. I came closer and closer, and then, about half a mile from the shore, I dropped anchor. The wind was strong, the boat swung round and faced the waves, which it took head-on every time. It tossed us around a great deal and indeed it was very uncomfortable. The sails were lowered and furled, of course. We might have waited until daylight in this unpleasant but safe position, but unhappily the anchor suddenly lost its hold. To steer a boat, it has to be moving: otherwise the rudder has no bite. We hoisted the jib and stay-sail, but then a strange thing happened – the anchor would not get a grip again. The others hauled the rope aboard: it came in without any anchor. We had lost it. In spite of everything I could do the waves kept heaving us in towards the rocks of this land in such a dangerous way that I decided to hoist the mainsail and run in on purpose – run in fast. This I carried out so successfully that there we were, wedged between two rocks, with the boat absolutely shattered. No one bawled out in panic, but when the next wave came rolling in we all plunged into it and ended up on shore, battered, tumbled, soaked, but alive. Only Clousiot, with his plastered leg, had a worse time than the rest of us. His arm, face and hands were badly scraped. We others had a few bangs on the knees, hands and ankles. My ear had come up against a rock a little too hard, and it was dripping with blood.
Still, there we were, alive on dry land, out of the reach of the waves. When day broke we picked up the oilskin and I turned the boat over – it was beginning to go to pieces. I managed to wrench the compass from its place in the stern-sheets. There was no one where we had been cast up, nor anywhere around. We looked at the line of lights, and later we learned that they were there to warn fishermen that the place was dangerous. We walked away, going inland; and we saw nothing, only cactuses, huge cactuses, and donkeys. We reached a well, tired out, for we had had to carry Clousiot, taking turns with two of us making a kind of chair with joined hands. Round the well there were the dried carcasses of goats and asses. The well was empty, and the windmill that had once worked it was now turning idly, bringing nothing up. Not a soul; only these goats and donkeys.
We went on to a little house whose open doors invited us to walk in. We called out ‘Haloo! Haloo!’ Nobody. On the chimney-piece a canvas bag with its neck tied by a string; I took it and opened it. As I opened it the string broke – it was full of florins, the Dutch currency. So we were on Dutch territory: Bonaire, Curaçao or Aruba. We put the bag back without touching anything; we found water and each drank in turn out of a ladle. No one in the house, no one anywhere near. We left, and we were going along very slowly, because of Clousiot, when an old Ford blocked our path.
‘Are you Frenchmen?’
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
‘Get into the car, will you?’ Three got in behind and we settled Clousiot on their knees; I sat next to the driver and Maturette next to me.
‘You’ve been wrecked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone drowned?’
‘No.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Trinidad.’
‘And before that?’
‘French Guiana.’
‘Convicts or relégués?’
‘Convicts.’
‘I’m Dr. Naal, the owner of this property; it’s a peninsula running out from Curaçao. They call it Ass’s Island. Goats and asses live here, feeding on the cactuses, in spite of the long thorns. The common nickname for those thorns is the young ladies of Curaçao.’
I said, ‘That’s not very flattering for the real young ladies of Curaçao.’ The big, heavy man laughed noisily. With an asthmatic gasp the worn-out Ford stopped of its own accord. I pointed to a herd of asses and said, ‘If the car can’t manage it any more, we can easily have ourselves pulled.’
‘I’ve got a sort of harness in the boot, but the great difficulty is to catch a couple and then put the harness on.’ The fat fellow opened the bonnet and found that a particularly heavy lurch had disconnected a plug. Before getting in he gazed all round, looking uneasy. We set off again, and having bumped along rough tracks we came to a white barrier across the road. Here there was a little white cottage. He spoke in Dutch to a very light-coloured, neatly-dressed Negro who kept saying, ‘Ya, master; ya, master.’ Then he said, ‘I’ve given this man orders to stay with you until I come back and give you something to drink if you’re thirsty. Will you get out?’ We got out and sat on the grass in the shade. The aged Ford went gasping away. It had scarcely gone fifty yards before the black, speaking papiamento – a Dutch West Indies patois made up of English, Dutch, French and Spanish words – told us that his boss, Dr. Naal, had gone to fetch the police, because he was very frightened of us: he had told him to look out for himself, we being escaped thieves. And the poor devil of a mulatto couldn’t do enough to try to please us. He made us some coffee: it was very weak, but in that heat it did us good. We waited for more than an hour and then there appeared a big van after the nature of a black maria with six policemen
